Surprise, surprise

Here on poor Diana the V-berth area has been the last part of the interior to get any attention at all.  One of the first things I did was to install the holding tank under the after end of the bunk; but since then it's been partially dismantled and not much has been done here.  (Stay tuned for a forthcoming post on this compartment when the through-hulls go in.)  The V-berth area has been used as a lumber bay for too long.  The other day I cleared it all out and stashed the usable lumber (mahogany, spruce and white pine) in the house's attic.  By the time I had swept and vacuumed out the V-berth area I felt like I had got a huge load off my conscience.  Suddenly there is actual space in this boat!

And the boat must have lost 200 lbs as well!

Here is a (lousy) photo of the V-berth right after I swept and vacuumed (for the first time in I won't say how long!).  The 5-gallon pail full of wood bits (mostly Honduras mahogany) is the only remainder of the once daunting heap that formerly occupied this space.













While laying out the forepeak lockers (more on this later too) I observed that the 3/8"-plywood bunktop felt distressingly flimsy.  Just kneeling on it was enough to bend it far too much out of level for my liking.  I have already done all the other bunktops, removing the old cleats for the lift-out panels, installing new ones saturated and bonded with epoxy and peppering each one with plenty of #8 screws.  Each time the bunktop has become stronger and stiffer.  If these bunktops are 'glassed to the hull-- and they are-- they should be structural members in their own right-- and so they are, now.

Hunter used plain white-pine 1x2s for lift-out cleats, the same as you buy at Lowe's or Home Depot.  Some of them had edges that had been smoothly routered to about a 1/4" radius, in order to protect your knuckles when you are rummaging about in the compartment.  But even if they were glued to the plywood with wood glue (and some of them, like the V-berth ones, were not) they were merely painted with Pettit Fiberglass Undercoater and otherwise left alone.  In the middle compartment under the V-berth, three of the cleats were sound enough that they did not require replacement (at least, not today).  The cleat along the aft edge was both too loose and too short to lend much stiffness of the bunktop.  So I removed it and fashioned another one out of a piece of 1x3, essentially the full width of the bunk at that point (about 34").  Properly fastened (with screws and then cured epoxy) it will stiffen the whole structure.

Inside this compartment was a straggling bit of old electrical wiring, leading through the bilge to the rode locker for the port and starboard running lights in the hull.  All right; first, I never run wiring through the bilge.  All my new wiring is run under the hull-to-deck flange.  There it's accessible and out of the muck.  Second, this wiring is red and black, and also 16-gauge, neither of which is code for boats any more; so I have run all new red-and-yellow 14-gauge and so this wire is redundant.  And, third, I am not reusing the port and starboard running lights in the hull.  They are too small and too low to be of much use except when motoring through a calm harbor at night.  Diana will get a one-light red-and-green unit, with an LED bulb, mounted on the pulpit.

I tugged and tugged on the wire and realized I could not pull it out.  Sure enough, the wire disappeared through the middle compartment's forward bulkhead, passed through the dead-air space and emerged at the bottom of the rode locker.  Obviously the entire interior structure was assembled outside the boat-- and all the wiring stapled to where it should be-- and then installed in the hull in as close to a completed state as possible.  This is how Hunter built five of these boats each week.

Now I despise all dead-air spaces on boats.  If it's inaccessible to humans, rest assured it won't be to humidity, bugs and bilge water.  Who knows what might be going on inside there?  And an application of Murphy's Law ensures that if you have a problem leak, or hidden rot, or a bug infestation, it's going to be in the one compartment into which you cannot readily get.  I had already resolved to open this compartment, at first by installing an 8" clean-out plate and then, in interests of simplicity and economy, just cutting a lift-out hatch into it and adding fiddles.  Also it would give me the chance to inspect it and to apply some epoxy to what I was sure was bare plywood in there.

Following this philosophy I have already cut access holes into the feet of the settee berths which extend through the main bulkhead.  Formerly these spaces were inaccessible and yet open for leading wiring and attracting humidity and bugs.  Now the one to port is convenient for installing and maintaining the Whale footpump for the head sink.  Both these new-found compartments are done now-- but one lacks a lift-out panel as I just do not have any scrap 3/8" plywood, since I don't like to use it for much of anything.  I do have some specific need for a sheet of it soon (more on that later) and will remake a lot of the old lift-outs till it's all gone.

I laid out an opening of about 9 inches square and rocked the jigsaw in to avoid drilling 3/8" starter holes and to save the cutout to use as the lift-out panel.  A can of Krylon supplied the corners' radius.  The piece of plywood came out perfectly-- and then, for the first time in 37-1/2 years, a human being gazed in at the compartment beyond.  And-- what a surprise.

This photo shows the space after I sanded some of the fatigued paint and got ready to install the new cleats.  At the forward end is the new hatch, about 9 inches square.  It might serve as a secondary rode locker if my idea of the plastic trash cans doesn't happen.  This is one storage space Diana now has that most H25 owners don't even know about!  The bare wood at an angle in the center compartment is the new white-pine cleat that just happens to be lying in the space (had to check if it was not too wide for it).
Having seen the top photo you will notice I started peeling off the old hull liner.  This chore is not particularly hazardous but really makes a mess.  I have invented a vacuum attachment that has a 6" putty trowel and a tube for a handle that plugs into the vacuum hose, expressly for doing chipping work (what we at CBC called 'pachippulating') like this.  I'll try it out here (rest of hull liner is already off).  Really the hull liner up here is not in such bad shape and you can see it's had good adhesion.  But it's dry and a little crispy and Lord knows how clean it is.  I am replacing it with the 'Irish tweed' stuff from Defender.

What I found in this cubbyhole was remarkable.  I had been particularly distressed because the accumulated junk, that had been condemned to remain in the middle compartment till I cleared out the lumber, included a two-foot length of rope that was sopping wet.  From where did the water come?  The rest of the compartment appeared dry.  The bits of scrap wood in there with the rope were damp but nowhere near as wet as the rope.  The hawsepipe on the deck is taped over against weather.  All I can account for is that the holes from the stem fitting that was removed (see them in the top photo) are still open, though on a negative angle, and rain and snow must have been blowing in there all autumn and winter and running down through the rode locker and the dead-air space to the second compartment (though I never noticed water in the holding-tank one beyond, to which all of the forward ones drain).

But, no worries.  The dark-green glass of the inside of the hull, at the very end of the bilge, appears sound, strong and-- most surprisingly-- dry.  Even more surprising, so does the plywood.  It is not damp or dark or even smelly.  For some unfathomable reason the untreated wood, which should have been a totally gooky mess in a compartment that admits drainage water but no air, has remained bone-dry and free of rot and mildew for over three and a half decades.

This 'first look' at the newly excavated space shows perfectly healthy dark-green fiberglass resin, a tight layup, no evidence of water intrusion or delamination and, best of all, no damp or rotting plywood-- even though the plywood surfaces were all unfinished (and I mean RAW plywood-- no paint, resin or-- had Providence intervened-- epoxy (which maybe no one but my dad had heard of in 1974).

The little black circles on the bunktop are my marks for the screw holes.  There seem like so many! --but keep in mind four pieces of wood have to be installed here.

The grey stuff along the one side looks like oozed-out deck putty.  I do not think (nor hope) it's a mud-dauber nest!  But really there could have been anyone living in here; and there is no one.

The stick lying at the forward end is an old cleat being reused as the new forward cleat, yet to be installed in this photo.  I always make cleats as long or wide as possible to add stiffness across the crosswise grain of the merely-3/8"-thick plywood.  Properly adhered, a new cleat does wonders.

I reused another removed cleat for the after one of this hole.  Being 1x2 stock (1-1/2" wide) it goes smack up against the forward face of the after bulkhead of this compartment (at the bottom of the photo).  I planned it like this when I laid out the opening.  This way the after edge of that cleat is adhered with epoxy to the face of the bulkhead itself.  In many cases the tops of such bulkheads are where moisture intrudes to generate rot, since the bottom edges, along the hull, are typically better treated when the boat is assembled.  I really do not relish the thought of replacing an under-bunk bulkhead, especially when it's so easy to avoid ever having to do it.

The bits of plywood to the sides are a piece of scrap that I found in the 5-gallon pail of blocks and cut to fit (notice the one under the flash came from the end of the other).  I don't care about their shape-- you only see the parallel edges in the access opening and these bits of plywood have been, as of this writing, thoroughly saturated in epoxy and well-adhered to the underside of the plywood, which I also saturated before installing the fiddles.  As soon as I drill a 3/4" finger hole in the cut-out panel it will be painted in epoxy too and replaced as the new lift-out panel.

I will post photos of how these silly cleats and all have gone together after the epoxy dries.  This whole space, including the underside of the plywood, will be painted in epoxy later and then in white Interlux Bilgekote as soon as it's warm enough to ventilate the space and enable paint to dry.  The bunktop will get done in Durawhite (or whatever the new water-based mildew-resistant paint Pettit is offering now that replaces it).
 
I have not yet decided if it's worth it to extend PVC drain tubes from each of the forward compartments into the after one (where the holding tank and through-hulls are) in order to isolate them from each other.  Any of these might make a very good stash hole for bottled water, blankets, sweaters, boots, and various gear; and as with the one under the cockpit it would be really nice to keep a mishap in one (or water from the hawse pipe) from wetting them all.  Plugs in the ends of the drain tubes would keep them dry till you needed to evacuate them.